


i hope we hang on past the last exit

by graysxon



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: But not quite, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, I should probably also kind of tag, I've tagged major character death but there's no explicit death scene ok, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Thus we address the Stanley problem, gratuitous use of commas, this is kind of sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 17:07:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graysxon/pseuds/graysxon
Summary: “Eddie?”Eddie is cold. He can feel the damp press of wet rock underneath his back, and a dull, heavy ache has taken up residence in his head. He tries prying his eyes open, but he’s so tired.“Eddie, wake up,”The voice is muffled, and only a little insistent. Eddie gasps and his eyes shoot open, chest heaving in breath like a drowning man.A dark and indistinct ceiling looms above him, and a face swims into his field of vision. It’s familiar, but not expected. Wait, Eddie thinks, does that mean -?“Stan?” he says.





	i hope we hang on past the last exit

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this on a whim after listening to "no children" by the mountain goats on repeat for two days, and ended up making myself sad about both Eddie and Stan. I haven't finished and posted fic in a long, long time, so I hope this is okay. The major character death is an implied one. Please enjoy!

“Eddie?” 

Eddie is cold. He can feel the damp press of wet rock underneath his back, and a dull, heavy ache has taken up residence in his head. He tries prying his eyes open, but he’s so tired. 

“Eddie, wake up,” 

The voice is muffled, and only a little insistent. Eddie wiggles his fingers and toes, and a sudden wrenching pain slams into him, radiating from his stomach outwards in teeth-jarring waves. He gasps and his eyes shoot open, chest heaving in breath like a drowning man. 

A dark and indistinct ceiling looms above him, and a face swims into his field of vision. It’s familiar, but not expected. _Wait_, Eddie thinks, _does that mean -? _

“Stan?” he says, and it comes out small and croaking. 

“Yeah, yes, it’s me,” Stan replies. Eddie gapes at him for a few long moments, wondering if this is real or not. He lifts his head from where he lies sprawled on the floor, peering in confusion at his own body, which seems clean of sewer water and blood, somehow. It had not looked like this last time he’d seen it. The last time he’d been awake. Eddie’s hand comes up, on instinct, to grab at the fabric of his t-shirt by his stomach, where the pain from before is humming like a low bass, but no tear and no wound and no blood are to be found. The skin underneath feels stiff - bandaged. He props himself up on his elbows and lifts his eyes back to Stanley. 

“W-what?” is all he can say. Stanley - Stanley Uris, who by all accounts and purposes should not be here in front of Eddie, _unless, _well, - is watching him with tired eyes. There is the same furrowed brow and the same dark flop of curly hair that Eddie remembers. Stan sticks out a hand down to Eddie, which Eddie takes and lets himself be pulled to his feet, stumbling a little. White bandages stick out from underneath the sleeves of Stanley’s sweater. 

Eddie looks around himself. A sombre and resigned quietness fills the nondescript room, which he recognises as a shadow form of It’s lair, with the horrors and debris of the cavern dulled and fuzzy, sinking into formless dark at the edges. The air feels cold, and Eddie shivers a little.

“Stan – where are we?” Eddie asks, turning back to Stan with wide eyes. He can feel himself begin to panic, or at least what he thinks is panic, but he keeps losing track of his heartbeat. He isn’t entirely sure that it’s there, but is equally uncertain of whether it isn’t. He gulps, his throat convulsing, and reaches out to grab at Stan’s arm. Stanley lets him, looking at him with those same sad eyes.

“Did we – _are we-?” _Eddie asks. He is scared to say it, choking on the words. He swallows, his chest fluttering up and down. No, he could say it. He could say that. It itself is gone from Its lair, or so it seems, so they had won. He is brave. He had _been _brave.

“We’re dead, aren’t we?” he says.

“We…are,” Stanley says. It is strange to hear the uncertainty in his voice. Stan has always been so sure of everything he says. Eddie looks at the floor, quiet. His throat feels tight. He can feel the material of Stan’s sweater sleeve under his fingers, but it feels like chasing a feeling that isn’t quite there. Eddie stares at the floor with intensity, mind whirring through the events of the past few days. He was there, and now he is here, in so short a time. He can’t help but feel like he hasn’t finished what he’d wants to finish, even though he doesn’t know what that is, exactly. He is cold, and exhausted in a bone-deep way that he has never felt before. There is something horrible and _wrong _about this place. He wants to go home, but home does not feel like it has a direction right now. A horrible and empty feeling threatens to eat up his whole chest from the inside and he feels the hot prickle of tears behind his eyes.

“I don’t want to be,” he says, voice quiet.

“I know,” Stan says. He lowers his eyes for a brief second, and a silent understanding passes between them. The two of them, stood trembling on the rocky outcrop where Eddie died, leaning over the great and lonely precipice that is _whatever comes next. _

Then Stan pulls Eddie to him, and Eddie lets himself fall into it in a slow despair, lets the waves wash over him like a steady and hideous drowning. Shaking hands grip the back of his jacket, and his own trembling grip holds tight to Stan’s sweater. Eddie squeezes his eyes shut. It isn’t fair, of course it isn’t. When he thinks back on it, his face pressed against Stan’s shoulder, it feels like his years (and meagre days) in Derry are the only real part of his life. Everything in between is a haze, convoluted and distressed, day after day of the minor stresses and the major, howling secrets, the half-respites and the compromises. He had seen a glimpse of something with the other Losers, those few days just gone by, something that had felt right (more right than anything else), but it had been masked by fear and uncertainty. And it fucking hurts. Brave as he is and was, it doesn’t mean he wants to go.

At least everyone else had got out – hadn’t they?

Eddie pulls back, sniffles, and Stan drops his arms and takes a step back, wiping his eyes with one hand and angling himself away.

“Do you know…what happened?” Eddie asks. It sounds stupid, once he says it, but who knows what you can see after you’ve died. If this is the afterlife, and the afterlife exists, then why not?

“It’s dead, if that’s what you’re asking,” Stan says.

“But, I mean, did the others make it?”

“Oh. Yes, they did. Come on,” Stan glances back at Eddie and waves his hand in a vague direction and begins to walk off down from the outcrop of rock that they had been stood on. Eddie takes a step to follow, but his foot nudges something on the ground beneath him. He stops, looking down, and stoops to pick it up. A jacket, crumpled but clean, which he almost drops when he recognizes it. _Richie’s, _he thinks, and his silly heart quails_. _The leather is expensive, but worn, and Eddie holds it carefully in both hands, his chest aching in a way that he knows doesn’t have a remedy or an end. He remembers, hazily, the jacket being pressed against him, soaking up his own blood and getting smeared with grime from both of their hands.

Eddie pulls the jacket on. It’s a little big on him.

Stan is waiting patiently for him, turned away like he doesn’t want to interrupt. The line of his shoulders is level, and he glances back at Eddie when he hears him move down the rocky outcrop. 

Eddie can’t tell what the exit from this place might be – if there even is one – and hates how it feels not knowing which way to navigate. That empty feeling in his stomach doesn’t feel like it could ever go away. Stan is quiet as he leads Eddie across a hard, stony floor, framed on either side by hazy walls of rock. A soft wind drifts past them, ruffles Eddie’s hair.

“Where are we going?” Eddie asks, his voice echoing softly against the cavern walls.

“I can show you - I mean, you can see what’s happening, back with the others,” Stan explains, his voice measured. Eddie’s stomach flips. The thought of it, of seeing them alive and away from him, is equal parts agonizing and something he knows he won’t be able to refuse. He watches Stan walk ahead of him, and wonders miserably if Stan has been watching them all from down here, alone.

It feels wrong and quiet, down here (up here, back here, wherever it really is), but Eddie can’t think of anything to say. This doesn’t feel like death. Life, for him, has always ever been about barrelling forward, cringing at the thought of a terrifying future but heading into it anyway, even when all the worries and the fears feel like they might finally kill him. It’s always been about knowing someone needs him, and doing everything he can to fill that need. He had always expected death to be some kind of absolution, an utter stasis, but here he is still moving. He still has a friend here, who could ask things of him, who could need him. And so, it doesn’t feel like how he thought death should feel.

Stanley leads him to another room that opens up in a cavernous space where the walls sink away beyond sight into a darkness. A pool of water lies still at one end of it, light from a tiny crack in the ceiling shimmering and curling off the surface of it.

“I don’t remember this,” Eddie says. Stanley shrugs.

“It didn’t look like this when I first got here,” he says. Eddie wanders past him towards the water and the light. His footsteps make soft echoes through the room. Water drips from somewhere.

“Then – what did it look like?” Eddie asks. Stan is quiet for a long few moments.

“My house,” he replies, finally.

Eddie frowns, coming to a stop in front of the water. His reflection looms beneath him, big eyes and a tired face, dishevelled hair. The cut on his cheek looks almost healed, the bandage gone. Stan has not come to stand beside him. Eddie crouches down beside the edge of the water, unsure of what he’s doing but feeling the compulsion to run his fingers along the smooth surface of it. Ripples cascade out from the path of his hand, shimmering out under the light from above. A wave of empty nausea rolls through him, thoughts ricocheting off the insides of his skull, and he closes his eyes against the onslaught.

He feels a twofold grief unfurl in his chest when he does so. The weight of his own was bad enough, but this is compounded, squeezing round his heart and his lungs like a vice grip. He gasps, or he tries to, squeezing his eyes shut tighter. He is struck with the sudden, inexplicable feeling that this grief is not just his own.

An image flits in front of his eyes, just briefly, but he doesn’t need more than a second to know who it is. He’d recognize Richie blindfolded, from the way he spoke, the way he moved, the way his feet fell against the ground at each step. So of course he knows that this person he sees, hunched over with his hands threaded through his hair and shoulders shaking in unmistakeable despair, is Richie. And Richie is alone – Eddie can’t see any of the other Losers – in a room that seems vaguely familiar. The townhouse, maybe. Eddie can hear, amongst Richie’s ragged breaths and wet sniffles, a quiet litany of his own name. _I’m sorry, Eddie. _He feels like he’s intruding – although these apologies he hears are meant for him, it doesn’t feel like he should be allowed to hear them.

Eddie inhales sharply again, feels the hot track of tears on his cheeks as he opens his eyes. Stan is standing beside him, where Eddie has fallen on his hands and knees at the edge of the water. The calm quiet of the empty cavern feels cacophonous when he breaks from the sound and image of the vision. Eddie wants to curl up in on himself under the weight of it.

“Sorry, I should’ve explained,” Stan says. He is frowning and his hands tremble just a little.

“Could you just see that, too!?” Eddie asks, in a sharp and sad confusion, when he gets his voice back. Stanley shakes his head.

“No. You have to touch the water,” Stan explains, dropping to a crouch next to Eddie by the little lake, “Did you see them?” The water sits, settled and still again.

“Y-yeah. I saw…someone,” Eddie says, cringing. He doesn’t feel like he can say just who he saw. That feels intimate, and raw, and wrong somehow. Richie is grieving, and Eddie thinks he should, or wants, to keep his own messy feelings in particular to himself. He doesn’t know – _will never know now, _he realises and it hits him like a cruel freight train – whether Richie could or ever would return any of it. Except, of course, that grief had been real and terrible. So, maybe, but Eddie feels wretched to think so.

“Richie,” Stan says.

“What?”

“It was Richie, wasn’t it? Sorry,” Stan looks away with a rueful, sad smile. Eddie’s heart leaps into his throat. How did Stan know? Had Eddie been that obvious?

Except, Stan had always been perceptive. He’d always been straight-up about everything. He saw through niceties, had maybe always understood the worst, but also the truth. He had seen through Bill’s promise, all those years ago, in Neibolt, and stepped over the threshold anyway. Eddie understands that.

“Yeah. It was,” Eddie replies, quiet.

“I’m sorry, Eddie,” Stan says, sounding very old and weary, all of a sudden.

“What have you got to be sorry for? It’s not your fault,” Eddie manages. He feels like they’ve reached some unspoken understanding here, or at least he hopes they have. Stanley looks at him with a sardonic smile. The cynicism looks familiar on his face, but he drops it.

“No, but…it’s still not fair,” Stanley says, sitting down on the bank. Eddie sits down beside him, knees pulled up to his own chest. “You both deserved more time,”

Eddie stares it his own feet. His nose tickles, the backs of his eyelids prickle with a heavy and resigned and howling frustration. He slouches, the strength fleeing his body. They are both enveloped in silence, lost to it, until Eddie shifts his face to look at Stan, who is staring beyond the other edge of the water, where it disappears into darkness. Stan fidgets, like there is something he wants to say, or like he is waiting for something.

“So did you,” Eddie says, quiet.

He startles when Stan lets out a dry, short, broken laugh. It is not a nice sound, echoing and grating off the walls of the cavern.

“No, no. That’s okay. You don’t have to say that,”

“Why not?” Eddie replies, sharper than he intended, so he adds, “It’s true,” in a gentler voice.

“It isn’t, Eddie. I chose my way out. You, on the other hand, didn’t ask for this,” Stanley explains, fixing Eddie with a look. He looks so vulnerable and regretful, more so than Eddie remembers ever seeing him. There is no trace of blame, no trace of panic, nothing like in Neibolt before. He looks like he might cry, defeated and little and scared, scared like always. Eddie wishes things were different. He wishes he would never see Stan again if it meant Stan was still back home, happy away from Derry, but still alive.

“You didn’t ch - this is It’s fault, Stan,” Eddie says, ducking his head and keeping his voice quiet. The room they’re in suddenly feels too big and wide and cavernous for this. It threatens to swallow them both in its dim corners and inexplicable waters. Stan closes his eyes like he can’t listen to what Eddie is saying, tucking his forehead against his own forearm, resting against his knees. He exhales, quiet for a long minute. When he looks back up at Eddie, his eyes are red-rimmed.

“The others – I tried to look before - I shouldn’t have, and I didn’t see much, but…It wasn’t very long. They didn’t stop for very long, when they found out,” Stan chokes out, disjointed and so quiet and sad, like he hates himself to say it but won’t stop now, “Which is what I wanted, but,” he pauses, swallows with difficulty, “Well, I just thought, because – it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Because it didn’t work, anyway,”

“W-what didn’t work?”

“You know what I mean, Eddie,”

Eddie did know what he meant, but he still didn’t understand.

“But we defeated It,” he ventures, uncertain. Treading careful stones atop an endless water. Stan looks at him with big eyes, wet with unshed tears.

“I was coward, and now _you’re _here. It didn’t _work_, Eddie,” Stanley says, laced with imploring and a fearful guilty apology.

Eddie closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against his own arms too and tipping slightly to lean against Stan. Stan is wrong, but Eddie isn’t sure how to tell him in a way that will make him believe it. Eddie lets it all wash over him, the memories – he sees the frightened faces of the other Losers, hears himself speak words of mistaken triumph, feels Richie’s hand on his shoulder and his gentle words, runs the gamut of death and shock and bleeding out on the cavern floor with the face of his – of Richie – boring a look that holds all the long years of fear, of waiting, of wishing and hoping and missing something he didn’t know he was missing into his own eyes. It is a cruel thing for fate to decide, to finally realise it all and have it swept out from under him almost immediately.

Eddie opens his eyes when he feels Stan get to his feet. He scrambles up after him, grabbing his wrist.

“Stan! You can’t really believe that it’s _your _fault, can you?” Eddie says, slightly hysterical. His knees feel like they might give out from underneath him. Stan doesn’t reply, but looks at him with an aged sorrow that Eddie feels thread through his chest like a terrible weight. Everything feels a terrible weight down here. He wants to leave. Stan fidgets, like before, like he knows something and wants to tell Eddie. Stan twists Eddie’s grip so that he is the one with a grasp on Eddie’s wrist instead. Eddie waits with baited breath.

“You’ll tell them I’m sorry, will you?” he says, inexplicable. Eddie furrows his brows, looks at Stan in confusion. _What? _Stan returns the look.

“Oh, you don’t know?” he asks, searching Eddie’s face.

“What are you talking about?” Eddie returns, desperate.

“I knew as soon as you got here, so I thought maybe you would’ve, too,” Stan says. He pauses, exhales and looks worried. He clenches his jaw and doesn’t say anything for an agonizing while.

“They’re letting you back up,” he says, finally.

Eddie balks, face twisting into a grimace.

“_What!? _What are you talking about, _‘they’re letting me back up’!? _We’re – I thought we were – and this was- “

Stan shakes his head gently, lifts Eddie’s hand and presses it against his chest, where his heart should’ve been. There is nothing there. No heartbeat, no pulse. Eddie stares at his own hand, his stomach dropping. Stan is quiet, doesn’t say a thing. He moves Eddie’s hand, presses it against Eddie’s own chest. There, faint but steady, beats Eddie’s heart. Eddie lifts his eyes to Stan, who is smiling a tiny, sad smile.

“They’re letting you go _home_, Eddie,” Stan says, gentle. Eddie can’t get any words out. The yawning uncertainty in his chest crawls up his throat and steals his voice.

Eddie doesn’t want to go home if home is what his life was before. But, somehow, he knows that Stan means something or someone else. A feeling. Home as a feeling, a return to safety and quiet, warm contentedness. _A second chance, _says one hopeful part of him that also thinks of Richie. At least, this is what Eddie likes to think this feeling would be.

“Then, what is this?” Eddie asks.

“I don’t know,” Stan says, looks a little pained that he can’t explain. He drops Eddie’s wrist and steps back just a fraction. Eddie, his chest twisting painfully, choked on a painful empathy, follows. Stan should get to come back with him. Life’s not fucking fair. Half his soul rejoices, whilst the other welcomes the drowning. Eddie doesn’t know how to come back from that, to come back from _dying_. But that’s not even his pain to feel – he gets to have another go, doesn’t he.

“Stan,” Eddie says, voice breaking. Stan stops, looking at him with wide, warning eyes. Eddie curls a hand, loose enough to dislodge, but a shaking and frantic and sad embrace, around the back of Stan’s neck and presses their foreheads together, feeling feverish and confused.

“You have to go, Eddie,” Stan mutters, closing his eyes but not pulling away. Eddie grits his teeth, tears behind his eyes.

Then Stan squeezes Eddie’s shoulder, just once, and steps back. Eddie watches, and it feels like the light in the cavern has grown just a little.

“I’ll tell them, Stan,” Eddie says, “I promise,”

Stan smiles, just so, and nods, sad and silent. And the Losers leave him behind, one last time.

\--

**Author's Note:**

> I am drowning  
There is no sign of land  
You are coming down with me  
Hand in unlovable hand  
And I hope you die  
I hope we both die 
> 
> \--
> 
> Find me on tumblr @novabyers


End file.
